'Art' will meet Art as The NOLA Project gives a museum encore

This
past May, The NOLA Project's production of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's
Dream" enjoyed a sold-out run in – of all places – the Besthoff Sculpture
Garden at the New Orleans Museum of Art.

Now
The NOLA Project heading back to the museum with a play that certainly belongs
in such a space: Yasmina Reza's "Art." It's the latest in the museum's "Where
Y'Art?" series, running Aug. 5-28 with performances slated for Fridays at 8
p.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m. All take place in the first-floor Stern Auditorium.

"Art,"
originally written in French for its 1994 Paris premiere, was later translated
into English by Christopher Hampton. The play was produced in London (in a 1996
production featuring Albert Finney), not long afterward moving to New York and
capturing the 1998 New York Drama Critics' Circle and Tony Awards for Best
Play.

With a narrative that asks, slyly, whether a painting done entirely in
white is worth great expenditures of time, money and ego, "Art" is very much a
contemporary conceit. You can well imagine what some audience members might be
thinking about – steps away from art works that may not be pure white, but
which still challenge notions of what is and what's not aesthetically
satisfying.